That Old SF Prejudice
Back when I was a physics student in the late 1970s, my physics teachers were pretty unified in and explicit about their dislike for so-called social “sciences.” Not only is there no science there, they said, there is no useful knowledge of any sort – it was all “pseudo” science as useless as astrology. Lots of “hard” scientists are taught to think pretty much the same thing today, but since our world is so much more politically sensitive, they also know to avoid saying so directly.
Old school science fiction authors were taught pretty much the same thing and sometimes they say so pretty directly. Case in point, Arthur C. Clarke [ACC]:
TM: Why has science fiction seemed so prescient?
ACC: Well, we mustn’t overdo this, because science fiction stories have covered almost every possibility, and, well, most impossibilities — obviously we’re bound to have some pretty good direct hits as well as a lot of misses. But, that doesn’t matter. Science fiction does not attempt to predict. It extrapolates. It just says, “What if?” not what will be? Because you can never predict what will happen, particularly in politics and economics. You can to some extent predict in the technological sphere — flying, space travel, all these things, but even there we missed really badly on some things, like computers. No one imagined the incredible impact of computers, even though robot brains of various kinds had been — my late friend, Isaac Asimov, for example, had — but the idea that one day every house would have a computer in every room and that one day we’d probably have computers built into our clothing, nobody ever thought of that. …
To be a science fiction writer you must be interested in the future and you must feel that the future will be different and hopefully better than the present. …
TM: What’s a precondition for being a science fiction writer other than an interest in the future?
ACC: Well, an interest — at least an understanding of science, not necessarily a science degree but you must have a feeling for the science and its possibilities and its impossibilities, otherwise you’re writing fantasy. …
TM: Is it fair to call some science fiction writers prophets in a way?
ACC: Yes, but accidental prophets, because very few attempt to predict the future as they expect it will be. They may in some cases, and I’ve done this myself, write about — try to write about — futures as they hope they will be, but I don’t know of anyone that’s ever said this is the way the future will be. …. I don’t think there is such a thing as as a real prophet. You can never predict the future. We know why now, of course; chaos theory, which I got very interested in, shows you can never predict the future. (more)
You see? The reason to be interested in science fiction is an interest what will actually happen in the future, and the reason fantasy isn’t science fiction is that gets the future wrong because it doesn’t appreciate scientific possibilities like flying, space travel, and computers. But chaos theory says you can’t predict anything about politics or economics because that’s all just random. Sigh.
Of course folks like Doug Englebart were in fact predicting things about the social implications of computers back when Clarke made his famous movie 2001, but Clarke apparently figures that if the physics and sf folks he talked to didn’t know something, no one knew. Today’s science fiction authors also know better than to say such things directly, but it is really what many of them think: our tech future is predictable, but our social future is not, because physical science exists and social science does not.
Added 10a: Note how it is easy to entice commenters to say they agree with the claim that there is no social science, but it is much harder to get a prominent physics or sf blogger to say so in a post. Lots of them think similarly, but know not to say so publicly.
> Today’s science fiction authors also know better than to say such things directly, but it is really what many of them think: our tech future is predictable, but our social future is not, because physical science exists and social science does not.
At the risk of being extremely late to the party: isn't it true that our tech future is much more predictable than our social future?
Consider the hypothetical that Adolf Hitler or Lenin died in 1901; the history of the 20th century would look vastly different, with incomprehensible numbers of ripple effects on the present. Whereas, if Einstein or Bessemer had never been born, it is hard to believe that we would never have hit upon general relativity or the mass production of steel.
The social future is, in fact, difficult to predict because of chaos theory. Which individuals live or die and at what times is effectively randomly distributed, but individuals can have enormous impact on the future. The technological future is difficult to predict too, but more because it contains problems without known solutions - e.g. how to physically construct a space elevator, or how to construct a theory that accurately merges quantum mechanics and general relativity - rather than because of small changes in initial conditions leading to increasingly large and unpredictable changes.
Look, I think the other greatest SF writer in the world had it right in some senses (OK, probably more than some, but I'll digress). Remember way back in the foundation series, Lije Bailey goes off world and immediately asks to see a Socialolgist. THere isn't one, but there's an amateur who's making his own science as he goes along, but Lije, a simple policeman no less, is accustomed to sociaologists having verifyable scientifically deduced and statistically validated emprical evidence about why folk do stuff. Psychology also in Lije's Caves of Steel home town is indeed considered a very "hard" science with massive mathematical constructions explaing pretty well everything, Daneel eventually helps Harry Seldon come up with Psychohistory a mthematical model for predicting the future in large groups very precisely. I think we are that the point that the off-world amateur was at now, these sciences still seem "soft" to physicists etc, but due to the increasing pressure to be properly scientific they are evolving, and none of them have fundamentally undone their own existance in the process, the rise of psychology , anthopology etc in the world of business proves their Darwinian survival value, and I think in time (though I may seem cynical) people will prove a lot easier to predict and explain than all that wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff the physics and quantum physics folk are trying to figure out now. Cos people are essentially quite simple and unchaging once you understand their origins and thus their logic chains, but I feel a digression in the wings and I'm hungry.. Plus I think it's time to re-read caves of steel. Where did I put that.....